GRUB Issue with Windows XP
 

Hi,

I am having a AMD 2000 XP, machine with 256MB RAM, which has Windows XP and Redhat Linux 9.0 installed. I am quite a naive user of Linux. I used to use the floppy to boot into linux before, which was painful. And Windows used to get booted defaultly.

Few days before, I installed Grub as my boot loader, which I loaded to the MBR. The installation was done with anaconda, after which the boot process used to get stuck at "GRUB Loading Stage 2" message. After quite a lot of Googling, I could get it to work to some extend. The state now is that, I am able to get into Linux with Grub. But, when I select WinXP for booting into, it just comes back to the Grub menu screen again. It just continues in this circle. But, anytime I can get into Linux without any issue.

I have mounted one of the drives of Windows to Linux, which I am able to see from Linux (Data is still safe!). Please help me in debugging this problem. I can't afford to lose the data in Windows.

I have one harddisk, which is 40GB in size. It has been partitioned as 10GB for Windows Installation (C:) & 20GB for the second drive for Windows (E:). And 10GB for Linux.


The results of some of the system check commands are given below.


Command : fdisk -l
====================

Disk /dev/hda: 40GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 4865 cylinders

Units = Cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 1275 10241406 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1276 4864 28828642+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1276 3825 20482843+ 7 HPFS / NTFS
/dev/hda6 3826 4798 7815591 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 4799 4863 522081 82 Linux swap



FileName : /boot/grub/grub.conf
===============================

default = 0
timeout = 10
splashimage = (hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Linux RH9.0
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=/dev/hda6 rhgb
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


GRUB Installation to MBR
===================

grub> root (hd0,5)
grub> setup (hd0)

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists....... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists....... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists....... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"....... 16 sectors are embedded
succeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0) 1+16 p (hd0,2)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf....... succeded
Done



Please help me.

Thanks in adance,
Jomy

Did rehat insert that line? cant renember seeing it in the dual boot fc3 setup.

No. RH anaconda didn't put anything correctly. It didn't have a proper entry for Windows. Grub was just getting stuck at the message "GRUB Loading Stage 2".
I googled about this and edited the grub.conf file. The /boot/grub/grub.conf was hand-made.